Hotline #805 - December 22, 1993

Amtrak is expected to begin advertising and selling a major new incentive fare for medium- and long-distance travel on January 6.

Amtrak's westbound Broadway Limited, running on CSX tracks, struck a northbound tractor-trailer truck heavily loaded with aluminum coil at a grade crossing in Gary, Ind. There were 188 people on the train, which derailed. The truck had driven around lowered Conrail gates and past working CSX flashers.

Amtrak President Thomas M. Downs said in a statement that "Amtrak intends to pursue whatever action is necessary against those commercial transportation companies, including their management, that are not demonstrating corporate responsibility for safety of their commercial vehicles."

Amtrak's Pere Marquette from Grand Rapids took 175 Broadway passengers to Chicago Union Station. There were no serious injuries -- 23 passengers were treated at Union Station; nine others were treated at hospitals and released the same day. Likewise, six of the Broadway's 14 crew were treated and released the same day. The entire train stayed upright, with total damage likely to be under $500,000. The equipment likely will be back in service within a week, except a bit longer for the second locomotive and a mail car, but the lead locomotive will be out indefinitely.

A CSX freight train was stopped about 300 feet east of the crossing, partly blocking the driver's view of the approaching Broadway. The Washington Post today reported that many crossing accidents occur when a driver assumes that a train within sight is the only one in the area. The 40-year-old woman driving the truck in Gary may have made such an assumption.

The second and last defendant in the 1992 Colonial sabotage at Newport News, Va., was sentenced to 17-1/2 years in prison. This defendant, a 20-year-old man formerly in the Coast Guard, will serve a concurrent term for attempting to derail a CSX train in nearby Sussex County.

A TGV Northern Europe train derailed in the Somme region yesterday, while going 186 mph, due to the localized and sudden sinking of the ground under the track. There were 211 passengers on the train but only two minor injuries, who were treated and released.

The new Forbes magazine carries a brief, but good, letter-to-the-editor from Amtrak Board Member Dan Collins, responding to Forbes' earlier hatchet job on Amtrak.

The successful VIP inaugural run of the privately operated Sunday River Bullet Ski Express was December 20. It starts scheduled service on December 26 over 75 miles of the St. Lawrence & Atlantic's ex-Grand Trunk line between Portland and Bethel, Me. Information and reservations are at 207/824-RAIL.

San Francisco planning officials quietly recommended that a downtown station for Caltrain and Los Angeles high-speed trains be placed underground near First and Mission Streets, the site of the Transbay Terminal, according to a San Francisco Examiner story this week. The proposal also includes tearing down the Transbay Terminal and putting the $101-million station on the site of the freeway ramps demolished after the 1989 earthquake. The Examiner said no trans-bay rail lines are planned and quoted an Oakland activist critical of that decision.

The Walt Disney Company -- in connection with its proposed theme park, Disney's America, near Haymarket, Va. -- wants state and county officials to pay at least $60 million for related highway improvements, according to today's Washington Post. Clearly secondarily, the Post says Disney says it plans "to explore shuttle bus service between the park and the Vienna Metro station and light rail service along a spur of freight track west of Manassas."